Life After Pearl

Louie Bellson Leans On Music To Get Him Through

December 16, 1990|By Howard Reich, Entertainment writer.

It`s probably no surprise that a few months after losing Pearl Bailey, his wife of 38 years, Louie Bellson is back on the road.

The man has been wielding a pair of sticks since he was a 3-year-old in Rock Falls, Ill., and, today, at 66, he stands as the last of the legendary swing drummers, a veteran of great bands fronted by Tommy Dorsey, Harry James, Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington.

So when Bellson takes the stage of the Jazz Showcase on Wednesday, opening a four-day stint with the Northern Illinois University Jazz Ensemble, he`ll be coming to terms with the greatest loss of his life in the best way he knows-by making music.

``I`m having my rough period now, just the realization after the fact,``

says Bellson, who married Bailey two weeks after they were introduced in London in 1952 (they later adopted two children).

``I find myself searching all around for her, and I can`t find her, so that`s really tough.

``But I know she would want me to continue, so I`m taking my vitamins and trying to keep strong.

``I just told everybody to keep me real busy-that`s the only answer, the music.``

Or, as Bailey herself once said, with characteristic wit: ``I see Louie as an awesome artist. If that man looked at me the way he looks at his drums, I`d be delighted.``

No doubt Bellson`s affection for his instrument has defined the way he plays it, for he always has sounded quite unlike his big-band brethren. If Buddy Rich was a brilliant technician/improviser and Gene Krupa a musical volcano, Bellson was the supreme colorist. He, more than anyone, proved that the drums could sing as well as swing.

At a telling performance this summer at Ravinia, for instance, Bellson seemed to coax melodic lines from his immense drum set (with its signature twin bass drums). To Bellson, there`s far more to rhythm than just making time.

``You`ve got to make colors, too,`` he says. ``I learned that a long time ago. By the time I was 13, my dad had taught me practically every aria from every Italian opera,`` adds Bellson, whose father ran a music store in Moline, Ill. (where the family moved when Louie was about 11).

``My dad believed the same thing as Duke Ellington-there are only two kinds of music: good and bad. It`s all music, whether it`s opera or jazz, and maybe you can hear a little of both in what I play.``

Bellson`s hard-core musical education began when he was 14, in a Moline dive called the Rendezvous.

``That was it-that was swing school,`` recalls Bellson, who was born Luigi Paulino Alfredo Francesco Antonio Balassone, one of eight children whose father eventually changed the family name to Bellson.

``The four guys who played the Rendezvous were all out of the (Count)

Basie school from Kansas City, and they let me join them every Tuesday night. ``And that`s where they taught me how to play the brushes, how to play time. You can`t learn swing in school-you`ve got to get that on your own by playing with the guys who know it.``

Bellson evidently learned his lessons well, for by 17 he not only had won a national drum competition organized by Gene Krupa but also earned a spot in the hottest big band of the day, Benny Goodman`s.

``As luck would have it, during my first professional gig-with Ted Fio Rito`s band at the Florentine Garden in Hollywood-Benny`s brother Freddy wanders in and hears me play,`` says Bellson, who counts drummers Sid Catlett, Dave Tough, Jo Jones and Gene Krupa among his influences.

``So Freddy says, `How would you like to audition for Benny Goodman`s band at Paramount movie studios?`

``And I start stuttering to myself: `Oh my God, the King of Swing.`

``See, Benny was making a movie at the time, so I went down to the Paramount studio, and suddenly I hear Benny saying, `Where`s that kid, the drummer?`

``And I immediately start to vibrate a very fast single-stroke roll with no sticks in my hand.

``But Benny doesn`t say, `Come into the next room, I want to hear you play.`

``He just says, `Freddy, take him into makeup and have him put on the gray jacket with the tux pants.` So my audition was actually doing the movie, right then, with the cameras rolling!

``Afterward, Benny looks at me and says: `Where`d you learn to do that?`

``

Bellson got the job, as well as a priceless musical education with the world`s reigning swing meister.

``Benny gave me my framework as a musician,`` recalls Bellson. ``He used to say to me: `Look, Louie, when the brass section is playing certain riffs, you don`t have to catch them all. It`s not necessary. The main thing is that you`re part of the rhythm section-make it swing.`

``Or sometimes he`d stop and say: `Lou, you`ve only got a four-bar break here. Don`t try to play everything you learned in 20 years in four bars. Make it pertain to what we`re doing musically.` ``